The Secret

This Campari ad was released in February 2005 Italy. The agency in charge of production was D'adda Lorenzini Vigorelli BBDO.

 What is your most visceral reaction after watching this?

This ad is called "The Secret" - a title which in and of itself is loaded with  meaning. The "secrets" here are layered, the first layer being a personal secret: each of the two transgendered characters, dressed in formal attire for some kind of gala or party, harbor secrets which are revealed in a second secret: a secret rendezvous in which true identities come to the surface. Both of these secrets are tied into Campari's branding of their alcoholic drink as being derived from an old and ancient "secret recipe" - a link which - though it provides a framework for this ad - is realized only as an afterthought (because that's what the intellectualized message that underlies an ad (the signification) usually becomes).

Let's start at the surface of this ad, at the narrative line. The scene is set at a cocktail party with red carpet (Campari is red), and from a distance, we see (what we assume to be) a woman in a black backless dress ascending a white staircase. The ad cuts to an androgynous-looking figure wearing a suit and tie (the apparel suggest this figure is a man, though the face seems to have both effeminate and masculine qualities), who is at a bar. There is a moment in which the woman in the dress turns around at the top of the staircase, presumably making eye contact with the figure in the suit, and it is in this moment that an intention is understood. The figure in the suit grabs a glass of Campari (another "secret") and follows the woman in black through large empty rooms until he(?)* catches up with her. In this confrontation, as she turns around, he, still in motion, spills his Campari on her - more specifically, in between her breasts, where her halter dress plunges. There is a sultry moment in which she gazes intensely at him, and then undoes her dress, revealing a masculine body with no breasts at all. She smears her lipstick with the back of her hand, and in response, he opens up his dress shirt, revealing breasts that have been bound, and then lets down his hair. The ad ends with an overlay of the words, "Campari. Red passion," with the two figures staring intensely at each other in the background.

*The English language actually works in favor of binary categories of gender because people are generally relegated to "he" and "she," while there is no pronoun for someone who does not identify clearly with either of those categories. "It" can be used but has a derogatory, animalistic connotation. In this advertisement, "he" and "she" are not clearly defined, but because I am limited by the constraints of the English language, "she" and "he" here referred to the assumed sexes of the figures prior to the revelation of their respective secrets.

What is the selling point of this narrative? Campari sells itself on the idea of passion (as well as its secret recipe), and this secret rendezvous is supposed to represent that passion: a passion that is illicit erotic, and risque, that transgresses normative bounds, and that is intensely personal and revelatory. Of course, this selling point rests on the very assumptions that Judith Butler decries: the assumption that heterosexuality is the norm while homosexuality or transexuality or anything other than heterosexuality is the "other." Our visceral reaction to this ad depends on our assumptions of sexuality. Are we indignant that this secret has to be a "secret" at all (the two figures are "coming out" to one another)? Why is this particular act a "secret" at all? If indeed heterosexuality is not "normative" then the shock value of this ad might decrease. Perhaps Campari is capitalizing on both the fascination with and fetishization of transgendered individuals while exploiting the assumption that the transsexual is the "other" - the being which must be kept (pun intended) under wraps.

**Other things to consider:
-Norms regarding men pursuing women (and vice versa)

-Ethnicity and "gender-bending"?